Taiwan-born pop star LeeHom (Wang Lihong 王力宏) just can’t seem to get a break. Last time we saw him, he was dogged by accusations of plagiarism. Now, he has fallen victim to an embarrassing situation brought on by Karen Mok’s Cantonese accent.
At the 16th Taiwan Golden Melody Awards, Mok was presenting the award for Best Male Singer along with Jay Chou, and Chou had her read the name of the winner, Stanley Huang (Huang Lixing 黄立行). Mok, influenced by the similarity of the two surnames in Cantonese, read “Huang” as “Wang”. After she read “Li”, the crowd erupted, and LeeHom didn’t stay to hear her read the last syllable, “xing”, rather than “hong”, but went onstage to claim his prize.
Naturally, fans immediately started pointing fingers. An article on Sina puts it this way:
Not only did they target Karen, calling her nothing more than a flower vase, but they even slammed Jay, and Jay’s and LeeHom’s fans got into a flame war. Jay’s fans accused LeeHom of having a hearing problem, and Leehom’s mocked Jay for never having won.
Stanley Huang, as a relative newcomer, apparently doesn’t have a pack of rabid fans yet.
As awkward as it was, it still didn’t match the Marisa Tomei moment that occurred in 1998 when Leo Koo picked up an award meant for Jacky Cheung and didn’t find out until the afterparty.
Links:
– Sina: article on Mok’s pronunciation; gallery of celebrities in attendance
– VeryCD offers the program for download so you can decide for yourself whether it was intentional or a mistake: Part 4 here, at around 14:22. (It’s on a registered site, so it must be legal!)
– The image is taken from an article on Singapore’s Zaobao.com